DOCSLIB.ORG

1 Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) Two Poems (Edited by Niall Rudd

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
1 Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) Two Poems (Edited by Niall Rudd Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) Two poems (edited by Niall Rudd) Landor was the last English amateur to write fluently and passionately in Latin. At various points throughout his life his kindly but impulsive nature got him into trouble. He was expelled from Rugby, rusticated from Oxford, ordered to leave Como, involved in trouble in Florence, and (following a libel suit) was forced to leave Bristol for the continent. He made a rather unsuccessful marriage, had a number of affairs, and failed to persuade his life-long love (Sophia Jane Swift) to commit herself to him. He held strong opinions in unorthodox combinations. Though a member of the Church of England, he was critical of the hierarchy, and held that in Ireland the Roman Catholic Church should have the same official status. Though he became a Tory, he was strongly opposed to monarchy, and supported revolutions in France, Italy, and America. His inheritance enabled him to devote his life to travel (especially in Italy) and to writing. He had a small number of close and devoted friends, including writers like Southey, Hazlitt, and Browning, but beyond them he knew many important people, and his colourful personality ensured that he would be admired as a celebrity. Landor was a prolific writer. His prose works take up twelve volumes, and his poetry four (see Bibliography below). But until 1999 there was no modern edition of his Latin poetry. In that year Sutton’s two-volume edition appeared with notes and translations. This could have been an epoch-making work of scholarship; but unfortunately the text (both Latin and English) has numerous misprints, and the translation, though at times neat and idiomatic, is often unreliable. 1 Bibliography: Walter Savage Landor, The Complete Works, ed. T. Earle Welby (Prose, Vols.I-XII) and Stephen Wheeler (Poems, Vols. XIII-XVI), 1927-36. R.H. Super, The Publication of Landor’s Works, London, 1954. (This shows how it is often impossible to assign a poem to a precise date). - Walter Savage Landor, A Biography, London 1957 (with extensive bibliography). D.F. Sutton, The Complete Latin Poetry of Walter Savage Landor, The Edwin Mellen Press, 2 vols., 1999. I From Dry Sticks, Faggoted, 1858 (Sutton, vol.2, pp.58-60) Landor wrote extensively about the Crimean War (1853-6), in which Britain, France and Turkey opposed Russia.The action referred to here was the battle of Inkerman (Nov.5, 1854), which was an important phase in the siege of Sevastopol. Though the allies eventually won, a combination of bad luck and bad management led to appalling suffering. The first and last stanzas make general comments on the disaster as it affects Britain. The others report the details as if the writer was on the spot; he sees the soldier’s death and the effect on his wife as symbols of the general horror. In subject and tone the poem resembles Tennyson’s famous description of the charge of the light brigade, which had taken place at Balaclava on October the 25th. The Times (November 14) spoke of ‘some hideous blunder’. Tennyson toned this down to ‘someone had blundered’, mentioning neither Lord Cardigan nor Lord Lucan. In describing Inkerman Landor, too, avoids names, but with his devastating antithesis in the last two lines he lays the blame squarely on the high command. 2 Amicus meus, strenuus miles, vulneratus Perfusa quanto sanguine hyems tepet Britannico de fonte! Virilium Semper fuisti victimarum Prodiga Taurica Chersonese! Quis vulneratum deferet auribus 5 Nuper relictae celsum animi virum? Pallebit ut conjux sub Haemo Vipereo moritura morsu. Spes insusurret credula credulae Jam Jam reversurum edomito Scytha, 10 Jam Jamque sanandum; salutem Contulerit popularis aura. Equus sed idem non revehet domum, Discerptus ille est sulphureo globo, Restabat ante atque inter hostes 15 Solus eques, medius suorum. Plerosque mortis perpetuus sopor Pressit: quibusdam cara parentium, Quibusdam et ipsis cariora Nomina contremuere labro. 20 3 Sublimiore, o Anglia, anhelitu Nunquam attigisti culmina gloriae, Nec fortiores militarunt Sub ducibus magis imperitis. My friend, a vigorous soldier, wounded With how much blood is the winter being warmed, drenched from the fountain of England! You always were lavish, Tauric Chersonese, with the sacrifices of men! Who will relay to the ears of the woman who has recently been widowed that her husband, a man of such high courage, has been wounded? She will grow pale as the wife did below Haemus when she was about to die from a serpent’s bite. Hope, eager to believe, may whisper to the woman, who is equally eager, that soon, very soon, he will be coming home after the defeat of Russia, that soon, very soon, he is to become better; the general rumour will have brought news that he is out of danger. But his own horse will not carry him home. (That animal has been ripped apart by a reeking cannon-ball.) With the enemy in front of him and around him he was the only cavalryman left from among his own side. Most succumbed to the everlasting sleep of death; in some cases the dear names of their parents, in others names even dearer than they were to themselves trembled on their lips. Never, England, have you reached the peaks of glory with more noble gasps of exertion; never have more gallant soldiers served under commanders more incompetent. Commentary Metre: Alcaic (after the Greek Alcaeus, 7th to 6th century BCE.) 4 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ∪ _ _ _ ∪∪ _ ∪ ∪ _ _ ∪ _ _ _∪∪_ ∪ ∪ _ ∪_ _ ∪ _ ∪ ∪ ∪ ∪ ∪∪ ∪ ∪ ∪ The metre, no doubt, was chosen because Horace had employed it to celebrate Roman valour in his patriotic odes (e.g. 3.2-5, 4.4 and 14); but 3.5 refers to the loss of Regulus’ army in 255 B.C.E., and tells how the Carthaginians sent Regulus to Rome to negotiate terms for the return of the prisoners. Regulus, however, persuaded the senate to abandon the prisoners, and then returned to face death in Carthage, demonstrating that a general should take responsibility for his failures. Elisions: in sanguine hyems (1) the final - e probably disappeared; cf. ille est (14) and the final - a in Anglia anhelitu (21); the same may have happened to the final e of atque and ante (15) and sublimiore (21). But in the final -um of celsum (6) and reversurum (10), and in the final -am of quibusdam (19) the vowel was nasalised and the m was not pronounced. In this last category (and in other cases which do not occur here) the voice, like that of an Italian opera-singer, glided quickly from one syllable to the next. Title The soldier was Major David Paynter, a kinsman of Landor’s close friend, Rose Paynter. For her, see Super’s index. Lines 2-4 The Tauric Chersonese: The Taurians’ peninsula, now the Crimea. According to Herodotus (4.103) the Taurians used to sacrifice any shipwrecked men and any Greeks captured in their raids to a maiden goddess (identified by the Greeks with Artemis); cf. Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 38-9. 5 Line 6 Relicta: at this point the husband is known to be dead, but the poet represents the news as being conveyed by stages. Lines 7-8 The conju(n)x is Eurydice. The story of how Orpheus almost succeeded in rescuing Eurydice from the underworld is told by Virgil in Georgics 4.485-502; she had been killed by a snake in Thrace (see the names in 461ff.). Here the Thracian background is established by Mt. Haemus - also in the Black Sea area, though at the western end. Sutton mistakenly identifies the woman as Cleopatra, who in 30 B.C.E. committed suicide with the aid of an asp in Egypt. Line 9 Notice the function of the sibilants, the personification of Spes, and the juxtaposition of credulus credulae (the last being possible only in an inflected language, where the sense is supplied primarily by the endings rather than the word- order). Line 10 Jam jam: the repetition stresses the imminence of the action; cf. Horace, Odes 2.20.9; Epodes 17.1. But Horace does not repeat the expression in consecutive lines. Scytha: Russia. Line12 popularis aura: a phrase used by Horace (Odes 3.2.20) to describe the people’s shifting favour Line 14 sulphureo globo: literally ‘a sulphurous ball’; a striking invention. Line 17 perpetuus sopor: from Horace, Odes 1.24.5, on the death of Quintilius. Line 19 In the interests of metre and sense I have emended Sutton’s carior to cariora. Line 21 Sublimiore . anhelitu: in their note on Horace, Odes 1.15.31 (sublimi fugies mollis anhelitu) Nisbet-Hubbard argued strongly that sublimis is used as the equivalent of a Greek medical term meaning ‘short’ or ‘shallow’, and that the phrase means ‘with short gasps’. In the Loeb volume, perhaps wrongly, I took sublimi to 6 mean, ‘head in air’, describing a coward fleeing in panic, not looking where he is going. Landor seems to have extended that meaning to ‘proud’. Line 22 The o is not elided before Anglia, leaving a hiatus. 7 II From Heroic Idylls, 1863 (Sutton, vol.2, p.152). Ad Psychen cum catello Psyche, nobilis es neque es superba, Idcirco tibi quem petis catellum Committo tenerum: hunc scio fovebis, Quantum nescio, nec sciens faterer Si mollem in gremio sinas cubare 5 Et narem gelidum applices tepenti. Priscum est huic genus (id manet legendum In libris veterum sacris) priusquam Nos essemus homunculi, creatum. Forti pectore saepe militabat 10 Insignis genitor, minus fidelis (Aiunt) conjugio: ut pudica proles, Et constantior ut tibi sit uni, Hanc collo injice sericam catenam.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Armstrong Browning Library Newsletter God Is the Perfect Poet
    The Armstrong Browning Library Newsletter God is the perfect poet. – Paracelsus by Robert Browning NUMBER 51 SPRING/SUMMER 2007 WACO, TEXAS Ann Miller to be Honored at ABL For more than half a century, the find inspiration. She wrote to her sister late Professor Ann Vardaman Miller of spending most of the summer there was connected to Baylor’s English in the “monastery like an eagle’s nest Department—first as a student (she . in the midst of mountains, rocks, earned a B.A. in 1949, serving as an precipices, waterfalls, drifts of snow, assistant to Dr. A. J. Armstrong, and a and magnificent chestnut forests.” master’s in 1951) and eventually as a Master Teacher of English herself. So Getting to Vallombrosa was not it is fitting that a former student has easy. First, the Brownings had to stepped forward to provide a tribute obtain permission for the visit from to the legendary Miller in Armstrong the Archbishop of Florence and the Browning Library, the location of her Abbot-General. Then, the trip itself first campus office. was arduous—it involved sitting in a wine basket while being dragged up the An anonymous donor has begun the cliffs by oxen. At the top, the scenery process of dedicating a stained glass was all the Brownings had dreamed window in the Cox Reception Hall, on of, but disappointment awaited Barrett the ground floor of the library, to Miller. Browning. The monks of the monastery The Vallombrosa Window in ABL’s Cox Reception The hall is already home to five windows, could not be persuaded to allow a woman Hall will be dedicated to the late Ann Miller, a Baylor professor and former student of Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • Essays on the Poets, and Other English Writers
    ESSAYS ON THE POETS, AND OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS THOMAS DE QUINCEY ESSAYS ON THE POETS, AND OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS Table of Contents ESSAYS ON THE POETS, AND OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS......................................................................1 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.............................................................................................................................1 ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY................................................................................................................1 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY......................................................................................................................13 JOHN KEATS.............................................................................................................................................24 OLIVER GOLDSMITH..............................................................................................................................31 ALEXANDER POPE..................................................................................................................................44 WILLIAM GODWIN..................................................................................................................................63 JOHN FOSTER............................................................................................................................................67 WILLIAM HAZLITT..................................................................................................................................69
    [Show full text]
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Dial
    EMPORIA STATE r-i 'ESEARCH -GhL WATE PUBLICATION OF THE KANSAS STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE, EMPORIA Ralph Waldo Emerson and The Dial: A Study in Literary Criticism Doris Morton 7hetjnporia State Re~earchStudie~ KANSAS STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE EMPORIA, KANSAS 66801 J A Ralph Waldo Emerson and The Dial: A Study in Literary Criticism Doris Morton *- I- I- VOLUME XVIII DECEMBER, 1969 NUMBER 2 THE EMPORIA STATE RESEARCH STUDIES is published in September, December, March, and June of each year by the Graduate Division of the Kansas State Teachers College, 1200 Commercial St., Emporia, Kansas, 66801. Entered as second-class matter September 16, 1952, at the post office at Em- poria, Kansas, under the act of August 24, 1912. Postage paid at Emporia, Kansas. S)+s, ,-/ / J. r d Ll,! - f> - 2 KANSAS STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE EMPORIA, KANSAS JOHN E. VISSER President of the College THE GRADUATE DIVISION TRUMANHAYES, Acting Dean EDITORIAL BOARD WILLIAMH. SEILER,Professor of Social Sciencesand Chairmunof Divisfon CHARLESE. WALTON,Professor of English and Head of Department GREEND. WYRICK,Professor of English Editor of thh Issue: GREEND, WYRICK Papers published in the periodical are written by faculty members of the Kansas State Teachers College of Emporia and by either undergraduate or graduate students whose studies are conducted in residence under the supervision of a faculty member of the college. ,,qtcm @a"1* a**@ 432039 2 3 ?9fl2 ytp, "Stabement required by the Act of October, 1962; Section 4389, Title a, United Mates Code, showing Ownership, Management and Circulation." The bporh, Sate Ittseuch Studies is pubLished in September, December, March and June of each year.
    [Show full text]
  • Storico-Accademia-Quartetto.Pdf
    During the session, there is no time to make wonderful cultural trips to Florence, but Florence is below, near, inviting, unique. We will not make trips to Florence, we will do more: we will do what we do best, we will participate in this immense beauty with our concerts in famous places and hidden places in the most beautiful Florence. A sign of continuity and gratitude for the men who have made Florence one of the most beautiful cities in the world. monk by his dress! They were often people who came from simple contexts and without any Firenze, Pinacoteca della Certosa education. Despite the inability of Acciaiuoli’s children, other means were found to continue the expansion of the Monastic complex. In the 14th century the large Cloister was added, while between the 16th and the 17th century, several maintenance and embellishment works were completed. Still in this period, several works of art were commissioned, some of which are still visible. Others, unfortunately, were lost following the confiscation of the Napoleonic period (1810). In 1872 the Monastery was abolished via a Royal Decree. the Cistercian monks were able to return in 1895. In 1958 the Carthusian monks were replaced by the Cistercian order of Monks. PINACOTECA Accordig to Giorgio Vasari’s famous Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, the great Tuscan painter Jacopo Carucci (1494-1557), The Galluzzo Charterhouse (also known as Florence Charterhouse) is an old Cistercian known as Pontormo, took refuge here to monks’ monastery built after 1341. The Chartreuse is on Mount Acuto - also called Monte escape the black plague during the epidemic Santo - at the confluence between the river Ema and Greve, in a location that is by no that swept across Florence, then under the means casual.
    [Show full text]
  • Conceptual Networks in Swinburne's Songs of the Springtides
    Chapter2 "QuiveringWeb of Living Thought": ConceptualNetworks in Swinburne's Songs of the Springtides JohnA. Walsh Digital Swinburne, Networks, and Nodes The essay below is infonned by many years' labor on an electronic, Web­ based collection of Swinburne's works, The Swinburne Project (<http://www. swinburneproject.org/>). This digital collection both provides access to high-quality digital representations of Swinburne's texts, along with additional scholarly material, and serves as a test bed for experimentation with various infonnation and Web technologies in an effort to enable new reading and writing strategies; to identify and visualize poetic and informational systems, structures, and designs; and to open previously untrodden paths of discovery through Swinburne's work. Digital media offer possibilities and functionalities-keyword searching, hyperlinking, integration of text, image, audio, and other media--that may benefit the representation and study of any poet, but for Swinburne, a deceptively and disanningly difficult and dense poet, digital media offer even more particular advantages. Swinburne is an ideal poet for such digital presentation and treatment. He is a poet of complex thought, extended conceits, diverse fonns, and extensive and rich allusions. This expansive though elusive or obscured range is represented in Swinburne's work in a carefully organized and architected manner. In one of his famously equivocal essays on Swinburne, T.S. Eliot claims that Swinburne's prose style represents ''the index to the impatience and perhaps laziness of a disorderly mind" (17). Eliot is correct that Swinburne's writing provides us with an index, yet he is very wrong regarding the nature of the mind that is indexed.
    [Show full text]
  • Chronological Biography of John Forster, 1812-1876
    University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 1927 Chronological biography of John Forster, 1812-1876 Catherine Ritchey The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Ritchey, Catherine, "Chronological biography of John Forster, 1812-1876" (1927). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 1800. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1800 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 'CHROITOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY OP JOHH P0RST5H 1812-1876 ty Catherine Ritchey Presented in partial fulfillment of the req^uirement for the degree of Master of Arts. State University of Montana 19E7 {Signed) Oliairman ^2xam. Oom UMI Number EP35865 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT yaMfiiBOfi riiDRwvng UMI EP35865 Published by ProQuest LLC (2012). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest ProQuest LLC.
    [Show full text]
  • Romantic Poetry 1 Romantic Poetry
    Romantic poetry 1 Romantic poetry Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era[1] which began in the mid/late-18th century[2] as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day (Romantics favored more natural, emotional and personal artistic themes),[3][4] also influenced poetry. Inevitably, the characterization of a broad range of contemporaneous poets and poetry under the single unifying name can be viewed more as an exercise in historical The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Edouard Fournier (1889); the group members, from left compartmentalization than an attempt to right, are Trelawny, Hunt and Byron to capture the essence of the actual ‘movement’.[citation needed] Poets such as William Wordsworth were actively engaged in trying to create a new kind of poetry that emphasized intuition over reason and the pastoral over the urban, often eschewing consciously poetic language in an effort to use more colloquial language. Wordsworth himself in the Preface to his and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads defined good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” though in the same sentence he goes on to clarify this statement by In Western cultural context romanticism substantially contibuted to the idea asserting that nonetheless any poem of of "how a real poet should look like". An idealized statue of a Czech poet value must still be composed by a man Karel Hynek Mácha (in Petřín Park, Prague) repesents him as a slim, tender “possessed of more than usual organic and perhaps unhealthy boy. However, anthropological examination proved sensibility [who has] also thought long that he was a man of a strong, robust and muscular body constitution.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction : 'Un Paese Tutto Poetico' – Byron in Italy, Italy in Byron
    1 Introduction : ‘Un paese tutto poetico’ – Byron in Italy, Italy in Byron Alan Rawes and Diego Saglia Th e connection between Byron and Italy is one of the most familiar facts about British Romanticism. 1 Th e poet’s many pronouncements about the country (where he lived between 1816 and 1823), its his- tory, culture and people, as well as about his own experiences in Italy and among Italians, are well known and part of his legend. More particularly, Byron’s debauchery in Venice and would- be heroics in Ravenna are often known even to those acquainted with the poet’s biography only in its most simplifi ed versions. In contrast, though the critical panorama has been changing in recent years, serious attention to Byron’s literary engagement with Italy has tended to be discon- tinuous. Yet he wrote much of his greatest poetry in Italy, and under its infl uence, poetry that would have a profound bearing not only on the literature but also the wider culture, history and politics of the whole of Europe, and not least Italy itself. As a result, Byron’s relationship with Italy, and the poetry it pro- duced, speaks to a much broader modern- day audience than simply a literary one. Th is book bears witness to this fundamental fact about Byron’s Italian writings by relating the texts Byron wrote in Italy to numerous features of early nineteenth- century European (and par- ticularly, of course, Italian) culture, and highlighting many of their hugely infl uential contributions to the histories of all kinds of lit- erary and non- literary discourses concerning, for example, identity (personal, national and European), politics, ethnography, geography, religion – even tourism.
    [Show full text]
  • Walter Savage Landor - Poems
    Classic Poetry Series Walter Savage Landor - poems - Publication Date: 2004 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Walter Savage Landor(30 January 1775 – 17 September 1864) an English writer and poet. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem Rose Aylmer, but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity. As remarkable as his work was, it was equaled by his rumbustious character and lively temperament. Summary of his work In a long and active life of eighty-nine years Landor produced a considerable amount of work in various genres. This can perhaps be classified into four main areas – prose, lyric poetry, political writings including epigrams and Latin. His prose and poetry have received most acclaim, but critics are divided in their preference between them. Landor’s prose is best represented by the Imaginary Conversations. He drew on a vast array of historical characters from Greek philosophers to contemporary writers and composed conversations between pairs of characters that covered areas of philosophy, politics, romance and many other topics. These exercises proved a more successful application of Landor’s natural ability for writing dialogue than his plays. Although these have many quotable passages the overall effect suffered because he never learned the art of drama. Landor wrote much sensitive and beautiful poetry. The love poems were inspired by a succession of female romantic ideals – Ione, Ianthe, Rose Aylmer and Rose Paynter. Equally sensitive are his “domestic” poems about his sister and his children. In the course of his career Landor wrote for various journals on a range of topics that interested him from anti-Pitt politics to the unification of Italy.
    [Show full text]
  • Notes and References
    Notes and References INTRODUCTION I. Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte·, ed. Alan Shelston (Harmonds­ worth: Penguin Books, 1977) ch. vn, p. I 55. This is a reprint of the 185 7 first edition. 2. Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy. On the Interpretation of Narrative (Harvard University Press, 1979) p. 117. 3. David Novarr, The Making of Walton's Lives (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958) p. 495. Nearly thirty years ago Novarr modestly noted the disregard of form in the study of biography. More aggressively, Leon Edel presses the case for the formal analysis of biography in 'Biography: The Question of Form', Friendship's Garland, Essays Presented to Mario Praz, ed. Vittorio Gabrieli (Rome: Edizioni de Storia e Letteratura, I 966) pp. 343-60, and more recently in 'Biography: A Manifesto', biography, I: I (1978) 1-3. 4. Edward Gibbon, An Essay on the Study of Literature (I 761, French; New York: Garland Publishing, 1970) pp. 99-100. Gibbon adds that the rarest quality is meeting 'a genius who knows how to distinguish them [the types offacts] amidst the vast chaos of events, wherein they are jumbled and deduce them, pure and unmixed, from the rest' (p. 100). 5. On Donne, see Novarr, The Making of Walton's Lives, p. 56; on Boswell, Robert Gittings, The Nature of Biography (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978) p. 32; Thomas Carlyle, History of Frederick II of Prussia Called Frederick the Great, ed. John Clive (University of Chicago Press, 1969) pp. ~; Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (1918; New York: Capricorn Books, 1963) pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Coleridge's New Poetry
    Proceedings of the British Academy, 94, 127–156 WARTON LECTURE ON ENGLISH POETRY Coleridge’s New Poetry J. C. C. MAYS University College Dublin THE LAST ATTEMPT TO COLLECT Coleridge’s poetical writing, plays as well as poems, was in 1912. The 1912 edition, edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge for the Clarendon Press,1 proved remarkably durable but mistakes and omissions have become evident; also, expectations con- cerning the way poetry texts should be presented have altered in the intervening years. In EHC’s edition, the poems were arranged in two categories: Volume I was made up of a main sequence of serious and achieved poems, and Volume II contained sequences of different sub- canonical forms and levels of achievement (epigrams, jeux d’esprit, metrical experiments, drafts and fragments). The effect of the divided arrangement was to relegate Volume II material to a category where it appeared extra, optional, ignorable. The less literary and the less finished were bundled away and excluded, the implication being that there are higher and lower levels of poetic activity and those which fail to preserve decent poetic reputation are best ignored. The old edition was put together at a time when poetry aimed to be poetic in a late nineteenth-century, high serious or at least magical kind of way, and times have changed. The canonical/non- canonical separation is nowadays more contentious than helpful, and the poems in the forthcoming new edition are therefore arranged in a unified chronological sequence. Read at the Academy 24 April 1996. q The British Academy 1997. 1 The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed.
    [Show full text]
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes
    Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes Produced by Paul Murray and PG Distributed Proofreaders American Men of Letters EDITED BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. "_Thou wert the morning star among the living, Ere thy fair light had fled: Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving New splendor to the dead._" American Men of Letters * * * * * page 1 / 519 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 1891 NOTE. My thanks are due to the members of Mr. Emerson's family, and the other friends who kindly assisted me by lending interesting letters and furnishing valuable information. The Index, carefully made by Mr. J.H. Wiggin, was revised and somewhat abridged by myself. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. BOSTON, November 25, 1884. CONTENTS. page 2 / 519 * * * * * INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I. 1803-1823. To AET. 20. Birthplace.--Boyhood.--College Life. CHAPTER II. 1823-1828. AET. 20-25. Extract from a Letter to a Classmate.--School-Teaching.--Study of Divinity.--"Approbated" to Preach.--Visit to the South.--Preaching in Various Places. CHAPTER III. 1828-1833. AET. 25-30. page 3 / 519 Settled as Colleague of Rev. Henry Ware.--Married to Ellen Louisa Tucker.--Sermon at the Ordination of Rev. H.B. Goodwin.--His Pastoral and Other Labors.--Emerson and Father Taylor.--Death of Mrs. Emerson.--Difference of Opinion with some of his Parishioners.--Sermon Explaining his Views.--Resignation of his Pastorate. CHAPTER IV. 1833-1838. AET. 30-35. Section I. Visit to Europe.--On his Return preaches in Different Places.--Emerson in the Pulpit.--At Newton.--Fixes his Residence at Concord.--The Old Manse.--Lectures in Boston.--Lectures on Michael Angelo and on Milton published in the "North American Review."--Beginning of the Correspondence with Carlyle.--Letters to the Rev.
    [Show full text]